


Flutter (One Shot)

by heyjayyay



Category: Fifth Harmony (Band)
Genre: Camren - Freeform, F/F, flutter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5896030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyjayyay/pseuds/heyjayyay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Camila is the butterflies in Lauren's stomach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flutter (One Shot)

**Author's Note:**

> Stay in touch!  
> Amazon Author: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07BB6DFXN  
> Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17449889.Jessica_Yeh  
> Facebook: facebook.com/JessicaYehWrites/  
> 

**Flutter**

**“Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.”**

The brunette enters the all too familiar flower shop as the lady gives her a soft smile.

“The same?” She asks. Lauren simply nods, her eyes surveying the various bouquet arrangements, the very many she wished she was able to get, but never had the opportunity to. She started coming to Bella’s Floral Arrangements seven months ago. The old woman had quickly learned to recognize the green eyed woman as a regular customer. Those eyes were quite hard to forget. They looked as if they had lived much longer than the young woman appeared, seeing more than most her age.

The lady returns a few minutes later with a bundle of white lilies. “She’s lucky you know.” She compliments.

“Thank you.” The younger woman says, placing the exact amount on the counter before heading out.

\---  
_She remembers the feeling in the pit of her stomach the first time they met in class. Out of the 200 students in the lecture hall, she just so happened to sit down next to a girl who would eventually become her world._

_“Hi. I’m Camila.” The girl says, extending a hand. Lauren remembers the pink bow the freshman had on her head._

_“Lauren.” She says, grabbing the girl’s soft hand. Instant heat._

_“Are you a freshman too?” The younger girl asks curiously._

_Lauren shakes her head. “Sophomore.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“How do you like college so far?” She attempts to continue their small talk._

_The girl shrugs. “Honestly, I didn’t think it was that great… until now.”_

_And then she smiled at her. Butterflies. So many damn butterflies._

\---  
The drive is automatic, the directions etched permanently in her subconscious. _Press gas, turn signal, stop, wait three seconds, pull forward, turn, drive more, turn again…_ Lauren wasn’t even aware of her surroundings. She’s just used to her hands on the wheel, maneuvering it robotically.

Before she knew it, she had pulled up to the gate, exiting the vehicle quickly as her feet made contact with the hard ground under the combat boots. Grabbing the flowers, she made her way down the gravel road. _74 steps forward, turn left, 42 more steps forward, look to your right, try not to cry_ as she’d done so many times.

\---

_It was her senior year of college. They sat in the campus garden, hidden in a world of floral brush. The brunette sitting sideways as she leaned against the bench of the gazebo, the smaller Latina in front of her, resting her head on the brunette’s chest, her back pressed fully to the girl’s front._

_“Camz,” the brunette began cautiously, taking the girl’s left hand in her own before turning it around to glance at her wrist. “You have to stop this.” She whispers, her thumb tracing the new abrasions on the girl’s soft skin._

_“I can’t.” Camila mutters._

_“Yes you can.” Lauren insisted, lacing her fingers between the smaller ones. “You must. Please, let me help you.”_

_“I don’t want to.” The darker haired girl sighs._

_“Don’t want to stop? Or don’t want me to help you?” The brunette asks, her voice cracking as her finger began tracing the metal band on the girl’s ring finger. **I promise to be everything you need.**_

_“Please, Lo, can we just drop it?” The smaller girl pleads, turning her head to place a gentle kiss on her best friend’s lips. Her heart fluttered._

_“Camz, you’re perfect.” She tried to continue. She needed her to understand, to believe the way that she did, just how true the words she was speaking were; that Camila was perfect, and meant everything in the world to her. “There are so many wonderful things about you. I just wish you could see that. I love –”_

_“I know you do.” The smaller girl exhales, tracing Lauren’s cheekbone with the pad of her thumb._

_“Then why won’t you –”_

_“Please, Lo. Not right now.”_

_“Later though?” It wasn’t much of a question, more so a statement._

_“Ok.”_

\---  
Her picture. That smile. A rare, genuinely happy smile that was reserved just for Lauren. It still makes her heart flutter; she can still feel the wings of a million butterflies in her stomach. The light in her chocolate brown eyes, captured, frozen for that one second in time, staring back at her. She places the flowers in front of her, sitting cross-legged in front of the headstone.

“Hey, Camz.” The brunette begins; tears unwelcomingly make their way to the brim of her eyes. She clears her throat “Today’s the day we were well…”

She hesitates, inhaling deeply, holding it in to calm her nerves.

“As I was saying, today was the day you were supposed to graduate.” Her voice cracks and the tears begin to spill over.

 “We… y-you …” she stutters, wiping the tears desperately with the back of her hand. “Why did you have to go?” She chokes. “We could’ve had the world. You were my world.” She’s sobbing now. “Why couldn’t you see how beautiful you were? Why didn’t you believe me when I told you? Why did you…” she couldn’t finish the sentence. The memory still burning in her mind.

\---

_“Goodnight, butterfly.” Lauren said, giving her fiancée a quick peck on the lips before starting the car. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I am so proud of you.”_

_The younger Latina smiled, giving a shy wave back to the brunette before heading back into her house._

_The brunette was slightly irked by the quietness of the car ride back but had assumed it to be post-proposal jitters. She should have known better._

_Tomorrow awoke with the bright sun. Camila did not. The brunette had arrived at Camila’s apartment, unlocking the door with her spare key, quietly shutting the door and making her way to her fiancée’s room, hoping to wake her with a good morning kiss._

_The sight she was greeted with was nothing she could ever forget._

_There was a lot of pleading that day; pleading with a sleeping Camila to push through, to keep fighting, pleading with God to help her, pleading with the nurses to let her stay after visiting hours, but mostly just pleading to her own heart, begging it not to shatter when Camila needed her most._

_“Camz” she croaked, her voice sounding foreign to her as it bounced off the stark, white walls of the hospital room. “I hope you can hear me.” Lauren cleared her throat as she settled in the chair next to her sleeping fiancée’s hospital bed. “Because I need you to hear this. I need you to know how much you mean to me. Please Camz, I need you.” She begged._

_And for a second, Lauren could see movement from behind her fiancée’s eyelids. Those eyes finally fluttered open and her breath hitched. Even in the state of exhausting, after losing all of that blood, those tired chocolate orbs sent her heart into a fluttering mess._

_“Hey…” the smaller woman whispered, her hand reaching out to the older woman’s hand._

_“Camz?” She was in shock. “Oh my god, Camz. Don’t do that to me ever again. I love you so much!” She rambled, squeezing her hand tenderly. “How are you feeling?”_

_“Very tired.” The younger woman sighed._

_“It’ll be alright.” She smiled, brushing a hair behind the woman’s ear. “You’ll get discharged soon and we’ll…”_

_The younger woman shook her head, cutting her off._

_“What do you mean?” Her brow raised in confusion._

_“No, Lauren.” She said, her voice strained with exhaustion. “I have no reason to be here anymore.”_

_“I know,” the older woman smiled, trying to keep things positive. “That’s why when we get home…”_

_“No,” Camila’s voice wavered. “I-I mean I have no reason to be **here** anymore.”_

_Not thing conversation. Not again. Not here. Every time they did, another piece of Lauren’s heart broke._

_“What? Yes you do. What about us? Don’t you want to be with me?”_

_“I do. But I can’t be with you when I’m like this.”_

_“You’ll get better, Camz.” She encouraged, her hand now cupping the woman’s cheek and she weakly turned her head to kiss Lauren’s palm. “Just let me help you.”_

_“I don’t want help.” She sighed, turning her head so she could look into those concerned green eyes again. “I just need you to accept this.”_

_“What are you talking about, Camila?” She shook her head, refusing to believe this was it. She knew her finacee struggled with depression, but she always managed to bring her back to the light. This time wasn’t any different. It couldn’t be any different. She needed Camila to be here. “You can’t just give up. There’s so much more to live for.”_

_“Please”. She wheezed, her breath becoming more labored as her heart began to feel more and more like lead._

_“Butterfly…”Lauren practically whined, as though using her pet name would somehow change her mind, the chemistry in her brain. But it didn’t. And so Camila continued._

_“You know what they say ‘If you love someone let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were’.”_

_“Which are you?” Lauren asked, feeling her heart being torn in the gaping amount of time it took her fiancée to answer._

_Camila only sighed, before letting out a chuckle. “I’m yours.”_

_“Then why does it feel like I’m losing you?” she questioned feebly. There was no malice in her words, just defeat._

_“You haven’t lost me. I just need some time to find myself.” The light in her eyes, now dulling. Lauren watched helplessly as her fiancée continued to give up her will to live, the machines around them now coming to life._

_“Let me help you find yourself.” She bargained uselessly.”You can’t…”_

_“Lauren” She held up a shaky hand, noting that her decision was final. “I’ll come back. I promise.”_

_“But why can’t you stay?” She was crying now, the monitors doing nothing to drown out the sound of her sobs._

_“I’m not happy here.”_

_“Not even with me?” Her voice cracked, tears cascading down her face._

_“Only when I’m with you.” The younger woman smiled meekly, reaching out to brush the tears from her fiancée’s cheek._

_“Then stay with me…” She continued to cry. “Please. Stay.”_

_Camila reached a cold hand out and laced their fingers together. “I’ll always be with you.”_

_And as cliché as it was, those were her last words. The brunette doesn’t really remember what else happened after that. She heard beeping, then silence, then more beeping from a different machine, panic of the doctors, and then she couldn’t hear anything. She saw black._

\---

“What did I do wrong?” The brunette continues to sob. She had driven her fiancée to every therapy session, sat in the waiting room, kissed her when she finally returned naming 100 things she loved about her. She always seemed so happy when they were together. But then again, she didn’t realize that was the only time that Camila was actually happy.

 _That’s the thing about depression,_ Lauren thought. Even when you’re happy, you’re not really happy. When someone tells you that there’s beauty within you, you can’t really see it. Like love, you are blind. And Camila was the love of her life, blind to her own beauty, and unable to continue on with feeling the way she did any more.

There’s a clash of thunder and she knows she better leave before it starts raining. She catches a unusual glimpse of color as she turns, wiping the final tear from her face.

_A butterfly…_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Stay in touch!  
> Amazon Author: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07BB6DFXN  
> Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17449889.Jessica_Yeh  
> Facebook: facebook.com/JessicaYehWrites/  
> 


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